


Got a Curse We Cannot Lift

by LayALioness



Series: When the Sunset Shifts [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Lincoln is an innkeeper so get psyched for that, Wells is a wendigo so there's that, You've been warned, also he is big brother to literally everyone, but not really, dead bodies ???, sort of a Teen Wolf fusion i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 12:26:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4137519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LayALioness/pseuds/LayALioness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke is bitten on a Sunday night.</p><p>There is blood, and a lot of it, but nothing else. No torn flesh, as ripped as her t-shirt. No bite marks or claw marks or whatever else that thing might have used. There is blood, and slight bruising along her ribs, and an angry red scar in the shape of a crescent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Got a Curse We Cannot Lift

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Wolf Like Me by TV on the Radio, which is essentially this story in song-form.
> 
> This is the first part of an ongoing series. Yes, there will be more. Yes, Bellamy will show up, and Lexa, and Monty and Jas and Miller and Murphy. No promises on any of the others, or which forms these characters will take.

Clarke is bitten on a Sunday night, and the first thing she thinks is _I have a Chemistry test tomorrow._

The second thing she thinks is _this hurts_.

She doesn’t have much time to think anything after that, because then the monster—the bear-wolf-radioactive-spider Raven has been ranting about for _months_ —is dropping her from its jaws, presumably to bleed out on the forest floor. It is dropping her, and leaving her to her mindless pain, and it is turning towards Raven.

Raven had been screaming to begin with, but Clarke can’t tell if she was anymore. Everything around her has muddled together into a dull ringing, and the edges of her vision are blurring to black. Still, she can see the whatever-it-is turning towards Raven, and then Clarke sees nothing at all.

When she comes to, it’s to the feel of Raven’s hands pressing down on her side. It hurts, but not mind-numbingly so. There’s a slight soreness, and some stinging. It isn’t quite dawn, the sky that gray-yellow that comes before the blue. She realizes dumbly that Raven isn’t wearing a shirt. _She bandaged the wound_ , she realizes, and she tries to say thank you, but all that comes out is a dog-like whine.

“Shit,” Raven whispers, “Shit, shit, _shit_ —stay with me, Clarke— _god fucking dammit_.” She keeps going, but Clarke tunes her out.

 _She thinks I’m dying_ , Clarke realizes, and at the same time, _I’m not_.

She can feel it, the wound, getting smaller. It’s strange, and unnerving; like her skin is being stretched tighter, the ends pulled like shoelaces. Her head pounds as if hungover, but she can see and hear now, and it’s easy to breathe.

She tries to sit up, but Raven pushes her back fiercely. “Are you _crazy_?” she hisses, “You need to lay down!”

“I’m okay,” Clarke mumbles, words feeling lumpy and awkward in her mouth. She sits up, and this time Raven lets her, equally annoyed and terrified.

Clarke glances down at her side with a wince, preparing herself for the grisly mess—she’s seen enough CSI: Miami to know what it’ll look like. Raven _has_ used her shirt as a bandage, poorly, but she’s done what she could. The shirt itself is soaked with blood and soggy, but altogether it has fared better than Clarke’s, which hangs in tatters from her shoulders. She peels away the cotton.

There is blood, and a lot of it, but nothing else. No torn flesh, as ripped as her t-shirt. No bite marks or claw marks or whatever else that thing might have used. There is blood, and slight bruising along her ribs, and an angry red scar in the shape of a crescent.

“Holy shit,” Raven breathes. Clarke swallows a scream.

           

They bury the body. It looks like it had in the middle of the night—big and black and dangerous, even dead. It doesn’t look like any bear, wolf, or spider Clarke can think of. Raven takes a dozen pictures from a dozen different angles with her phone, and then a few more of the gravesite so she’ll know where to find it.

“In case we need to come back,” she explains. Clarke shivers at the thought, but doesn’t question it. If she starts asking questions about what they’ve just gone through, she’s worried she’ll never be able to stop.

Raven offers to carry her home “ _Private Ryan_ style,” but beyond the headache and achy ribs, Clarke feels fine. They climb in through her window as gray-yellow faded to the white-blue of morning. The air smells like rain, and dirt, and coppery blood—though that last part is probably just them.

Raven has lived with Clarke and Abby since her mom died seven months ago. Technically, she lives in the guest room, but they usually end up in Clarke’s, anyway. _It’s like a permanent slumber party_ , she’d said once.

“How do you feel?” Raven asks. Remarkably, she’s only asked the same question twice, and she’d remained largely quiet the whole walk back.

“Tired. I just want to sleep it off,” Clarke sighs, swinging her legs over the sill and then closing it tight behind her.

“Great, well,” Raven makes a point of checking Clarke’s alarm clock, “Feel free to take a fourteen-minute nap before we have to leave for class.” She glares doubtfully at Clarke—blood stained and haggard, leaves and branches and dirt all over her hair and skin. “Actually, let’s just stop for coffee on the way.”

Clarke only showers for seven minutes, before Raven blasts her way through the bathroom door. “You’re not the only one that got jumped in the woods last night,” she says hotly, tossing Clarke a towel before shoving her out.

Beyond offering half a dozen pop culture quips, Raven has been awfully cavalier about the whole situation. Not that Clarke blames her— _she’s_ hardly said anything about it, at all. And anyway, it isn’t exactly _un-like_ Raven to be so flippant; Clarke just assumed something so serious might have been an exception.

Abby’s car is still parked in the driveway when the girls stagger home, but that doesn’t mean much. She’s easy to avoid, even when they aren’t trying. She works long hours, so when she _is_ home, she mostly sleeps.

Clarke dresses in the first clothes she can find, which smell vaguely of laundry detergent and something strange, like _musk_ , she assumes. She still stinks of dirt and blood and a little bit of sweat, but at least her hair is washed now. The crescent mark is still there, pressed to the skin of her side like a crooked smile. It isn’t so angry-looking now, having faded to a pale pink. She fingers it idly, which is how Raven finds her.

Raven pauses in toweling her hair—recently she’d cropped it short and dyed it yellow, bright against her brown skin. _Now we match_ , she’d told Clarke with a grin—to stare at the mark with raised eyebrows.

She points an accusing finger at the scar, even as Clarke tugs her shirt back down. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

Clarke rolls her eyes, waiting for the next movie reference. “What?”

Raven closes her eyes and howls like a wolf. Clarke rolls her eyes again, and harder. Raven shrugs, tugging on one of Clarke’s band tees and a pair of her elastic gym shorts—Raven is taller, but Clarke’s waistline has a few extra inches.

“Fine, but when you start craving fresh-killed rabbits, I’m saying _I told you so_.”

The thing is, as pragmatic as Clarke likes to think of herself—because she _is_ , they used to call her Mom in Junior High—she can’t quite rule the whole werewolf thing out. Maybe that’s just the trauma speaking, or one too many summer horror binges, but. So she just frowns, scoops up her bag, and slides on a pair of sneakers.

Clarke’s truck is named Tangerine, after the song not the fruit, which nobody really _gets_ but her. It’s an old truck—archaic, in Raven’s words—and Raven is really the only other person that will ride in it, which she does begrudgingly because often there’s no alternative. Even Abby always takes her own car going grocery shopping.

Abby is Clarke's mom, and while she calls her Mom to her face, she usually uses her given name everywhere else because, why not? It’s a nice name.

The girls each grab a waiting toaster strudel—Abby has taken to toasting and icing them beforehand, and leaving them on the counter in separate Ziploc’s labeled with the girls’ names—on their way out the door. They toss their bags in the bed of the truck, to leave room on the bench for them to sprawl.

The engine makes a horrifying growling noise when it finally turns, but it’s old, and so Clarke pretends it’s normal. Raven gives her a Look, which she chooses to ignore.

Arkadia is not a large town, and while they could have easily walked from Clarke’s house to their school, it would have taken nearly thirty minutes, while driving takes barely five. In Tangerine, it takes around seven.

Most of Arkadia is made up of trees—tall, green ones with needles and cones that somehow manage to fit into every crevice. There are the houses, too, all similar two-stories with history and saggy gutters, and the university which is barely one. There’s a whole row of shops and restaurants on Main Street, for the out of towner’s looking for antiques. There’s an elementary, which had been combined with the Junior High so they could put in a town pool, and Walden High.

Main Street is the only real _road_ in Arkadia—it’s halved by Highway S-94, and there are the neighborhood alcoves, but mostly there are just the dirt paths used by the locals. Clarke drives along the one that leads into the back of Walden’s parking lot. She likes to park in the very back corner, which Raven always complains about for the _entire_ walk to the building, but she’s the driver and she doesn’t like to park so close to other cars.

“Tangerine is such a _snob_ ,” Raven whines. Clarke just shrugs because, well, she isn’t _wrong_.

Walden High is just big enough to contain its one-hundred-twenty-five population, made entirely of sandstone and old brick. The floors are that old type of laminate, which crumble at the edges and peel up in spots. The lockers have been used by most of the students’ parents, and some grandparents, passing down ancient graffiti and fossilized gum like family heirlooms. The desks are old too, but the books are sort of recent hand-me-downs from the university.

Most of the school’s money goes to the sports teams, which seems fair as they’re usually the ones organizing bake sales and just generally fundraising for themselves. The band gets some new trumpets every now and again, and the drama club has a yearly budget for costumes. As a whole, they can certainly do _worse_.

Raven leaves her in the hallway with a grimace. They have block schedules, separated into colors in an effort to inspire school spirit. On green days, the girls share three classes. On red days, they share none. Monday is a red day.

(Technically, the colors are Spruce and Sinopia, but no one is fooled. Their sports’ uniforms look like Christmas.)

Clarke doesn’t actually mind school all that much— _yes_ the early wake-up call is a pain, and honestly her existence would be easier if math wasn’t a thing, but she generally _likes_ learning, and isn’t above occasional socialization.

Which is why it is so strange, when she walks through the locker room doors only to feel like she’s just been hit in the face with a baseball bat.

It takes her a while to realize it’s the _smells_. And the noises, and the lights, but mostly the smells. The sweat and body odor and hot-forgot-to-brush-my-teeth breath and old laundry that stinks of mold and athlete’s foot and a little bit of sex—who’s having sex in the _locker room?_ —and suddenly Clarke can’t breathe.

She feels her back collide with the tiled wall for a moment, eyes slammed shut and head bowed down. Someone is asking if she’s okay, but their voice is muffled in her attempt to just _shut it all off_. She needs to turn off her senses, she needs to breathe, she needs to sit down. She collapses—one out of three isn’t so bad.

Someone, she thinks distantly it might be the teacher, is hoisting her up by her upper arms. They lead her stumbling to the nurse’s office, where she promptly sinks into a chair with her head between her knees. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do during a panic attack? She figures that’s what this is; she’s too young to have a stroke, and her chest does sort of hurt in its attempt to keep breathing. Her eyes are still closed, the voices still muffled, but she can still smell the stenches of human population.

Eventually someone—the teacher again, she figures—manages to call Abby. Clarke isn’t sure what they diagnose her with, as long as it means she could _get out_. The nurse softly offers to let her wait in the office, or outside, her choice.

“Outside,” Clarke gasps. _God, please, outside, get me out._

They half carry her to the front door, and then it opens, and she can breathe again. She waits for Abby on one of the benches out front, wondering what they told her mother, wondering what it really _is_ , wondering if anyone had thought to tell Raven, wondering how mad she’ll be when Clarke isn’t there for lunch, wondering how she’ll get Tangerine home. At least she’ll get out of the Chemistry test.

Abby pulls up within ten minutes. She is driving quickly, but she always drives quickly, so Clarke can’t tell how much of it is from panic.

She seems steady when she approaches the bench, and Clarke’s own steady-face might help. She doesn’t bother asking what happened, because Abby doesn’t do things like that, but she does carry Clarke’s bag all the way to the car.

When they get home, she just says, “Maybe you should rest a while,” which means Clarke probably looks as exhausted as she feels. She nods mutely and trudges upstairs. Her nose is still burning, like she’s taken in too much air at once, and it’s giving her another headache. The house is old and she never noticed how much it creaked before.

Clarke collapses onto her mattress, but even with her face buried in pillows and the door firmly shut, she can hear her mother pattering about downstairs. Abby isn’t even being _loud_ , but Clarke can hear the slap of her naked soles against kitchen tile, the hum of the coffee maker turning on, the steady drip of the leaky faucet.

She raises a hand to rub her tired eyes, and notices her nailbeds are still caked in blood that the shower wasn’t able to rinse. She wonders if all of it is hers.

It can’t be. Raven didn’t say much about what had happened in the woods, but Clarke remembers enough. She remembers Raven’s scream, she remembers turning and suddenly being launched through the air. Her collapse against the earth, the snarling jaws flashing an inch from her face, before ripping into her body. And then the teeth were aimed at Raven, and Clarke started fading out. She remembers waking up, still bleeding, still on her back—but several yards from her first blood-stained patch of leaf litter. The creature, a mass of teeth and blood and fur, lifeless a few feet away. Blood from knuckle to forearm. Blood on her cheeks and in her hair. Blood in her fingernails. Blood in her mouth. Raven, scared and worried. Scared of the creature, scared of the blood, scared of _her_. Worried for her, too.

Clarke lets a hand drift lazily back to her scar, hidden beneath her shirt. She knows where it is, though, knows the curve of it as though it’s been with her for years. She can smell her mother’s coffee drifting up through the floorboards. She can hear the neighbor’s sprinkler kicking on. The scuff of a squirrel on their lawn—the woodsy smell of it. She fades out.

When Clarke wakes up, she finds with some sort of satisfaction that she’s slept through nearly all of her first two classes. Twenty-four minutes to lunch. Only two and a half hours, and she still feels so much more alert. The smell of coffee has faded, but she knows there’s a quarter of a pot growing cold on the counter. The house still smells of Abby, but barely, so she’s probably at the hospital. Clarke doesn’t bother questioning these things or how she knows them.

She makes a split decision to hike over to the school, and meet Raven for lunch.

The decision to start running is also sudden—just moments in the fresh air, and the trees, and her legs are burning with _need_.

There are smells there too, of course, but rather than overwhelming they embrace her. The sounds, the colors, the dancing shadows of light through leaves. The sound of small feet—mice and squirrels and rabbits—she can chase them another time. She _will_ chase them another time.

She runs, and trips, and runs some more. She tears over fallen trees and rotten logs and underbrush and tangled thorns, and she doesn’t stop when she stumbles or rips through a spider’s web. She laughs as she goes, the sound getting lost when she presses on. She wants to dig her fingers into the earth, to let the soil collect under her nails with the blood, but she forces herself to stay upright.

She reaches the parking lot fifteen minutes early, hair tangled up with twigs and dead flowers, skin covered in a light sheen of sweat and the dirt kicked up by her heels. Her feet still burn within her sneakers, like her shoes are too tight and uncomfortable. She kicks them off, but her toes are still cramped, so she peels her socks off too. She tosses them in the bed of her truck and then leans against the hood to wait.

The wave of students pulse out of Walden, and Raven marches angrily at the head. Clarke can see her perfectly, even from her little corner. She tosses up an arm in a wave, and Raven’s entire body goes rigid as she stalks over. Clarke can smell the annoyance that hangs from her shoulders, and tries to swallow her laugh.

“Oh, so you think it’s _funny_ to spend all morning hearing how your best friend _collapsed_ in first period, and had to be carried to the nurse’s office,” Raven huffs. Clarke shrugs nonchalantly, still in a good mood from her run. She rubs absent mindedly at the mark through her shirt. Raven tracks the movement, and narrows her eyes.

“There was too much,” Clarke explains.

Raven’s glare is only softened by the glint of curiosity. “Too much what?”

“Smells,” Clarke decides. “Light. Voices. Mostly the smells though.” She tips her head back and breathes deeply. Woods and stale cigarettes and stale beer and sex— _again_ —and gasoline and fast food and teenage sweat. She can smell _Raven_ , which feels weird so she ignored it. And if she closes her eyes, she can _hear_ her—her breathing, the twitch of her nervous fingers by her side, a tiny shuffle of feet, and her heartbeat. Steady, but shallow, like a bird’s. Fragile.

When she opens her eyes again, Raven is looking at her with a strange expression, caught somewhere between interest and admiration, with her head tipped to the side. They lock eyes for a moment, before she speaks. “So are we getting tacos, or what?”

“Or what,” Clarke answers, unlocking the door. “I’m in deep need of onion rings.”

The drive over to Fast Four—a pocket off of Main Street, with a Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Anthony’s Pizzeria, and McDonald’s conveniently side-by-side—is a little longer than that morning’s. Students are allowed to leave Walden campus during lunch hour, and since they’re all teenagers, nearly all of them end up at Fast Four. The lines are horrendous, but there is nothing Clarke isn’t willing to sacrifice for onion rings.

She sends Raven to buy the food, because she can’t breathe outside of the truck. She rolls the windows up tightly and closes her eyes, resting her head against the door to wait.

She only eats two rings before the nausea bubbles over, and she stumbles a few feet from the truck to vomit as Raven holds back her hair.

“It’s probably a werewolf thing,” Raven declares sadly. “You can only stomach human meat, now. Goodbye onion rings, forever.” She’s joking, or trying to, but Clarke can see the worry in her eyes.

“I’ll eat you first,” Clarke mutters. She wipes her mouth and keeps her eyes closed while Raven drives back to the school.

 

In the end, leaving is really the only choice.

She almost hurts a kid that day, out on Main. She loses control, and the little girl is running towards her, and Clarke snaps. Raven manages to drag her back before she does any real damage, but one look at little Charlotte’s face, and Clarke knows.

It isn’t safe for her to be there, anymore, isn’t safe for her to be around people. _She_ isn’t safe to be around.

So she waits until Raven’s breathing evens out—with her new ears, Raven can’t just pretend anymore. Clarke is noiseless as she packs her bags with just the necessities. First Aid Kit, a few clothes, running shoes, her phone and charger, a few granola bars, toilet paper. A picture of her and her mom and Raven. A picture of her dad.

She sneaks out the window like so many times before. She thinks about leaving a note, but what could she say? _Sorry for abandoning you but I’m worried I might eat some kid_? Maybe for Raven, but it’ll never work with her mom. In the end, when she’s five miles out she sends Raven a text.

_Don’t look for me. I’m safe. I’m sorry. Take care of Abby. I love you both._

She turns her phone off, for good measure. She thinks about taking the whole chip out, but she doesn’t want to risk losing her only connection to them; she’s not that selfless.

She hikes for a while. Runs a little. But it’s dark out, and while she can see much better than she’d been able to before, it’s still treacherous in the woods. She can’t get that first night out of her head. The creature, the blood. She’s gotten her nails scrubbed clean, but she’s sure it’s stained her scalp.

She doesn’t really have much of a plan, beyond _leave Arkadia_ , so when she finds the lodge just fifteen miles outside of town, she pretty much figures it’s a sign. Plus, she is exhausted and can use a hot shower, along with some little free soaps.

The building seems old, but well-cared for, and made out of solid wood. It’s pretty massive, and she wonders how she’d never known about it before. It isn’t exactly hidden, but it’s nestled in the trees so it’d be easy to miss unless you knew where to look.

 _It’s something out of a fantasy story_ , she thinks distantly as she opens the door. _But then again, so am I._

The lobby looks empty, at first. Old, well-maintained furniture to go with the theme. Large, ornate carpets. Wooden walls covered in old photographs and tin types. She takes it all in before her eyes find the front desk, and the man standing rigid behind it.

He’s tense, she can tell, and something about him smells different. He smells…familiar. Warm. Like forest, and soil, and home. She steps a little closer, and then he puts up a hand, frowning.

“What do you think you’re doing here?” he demands, and Clarke pauses, confused.

“Buying a room?” she tries, unsure. He still smells warm, but also…frightened. Angry. Nervous. _Warm_.

“What pack are you from?” he asks, like this is some sort of interrogation. She wonders if it’s code for something. Clarke shakes her head, more confused than ever.

“I’m from Arkadia, look, I just need it for tonight—I’m taking the bus in the morning.”

The man eyes her for a minute, and then shakes his head. He’s bigger than her, and obviously older—probably late-twenties, but it’s hard to tell—and it gives him the impression of a disappointed parent. Clarke scowls.

“Fine,” she snarls, “Guess I’ll take my business elsewhere.” She turns on her heel towards the door, and is almost there when he spoke.

“You’re a wolf,” he announces. Doesn’t ask. He knows it’s true—he can probably smell her. Clarke freezes, but doesn’t turn. “A new one. What happened? You lose control? Kill your parents? Break your little brother’s arm?”

The words are harsh but his tone is gentle—he’s not goading her, he’s genuinely curious, and Clarke wonders if those specifics apply to him. She shakes her head and turns to face him.

“There was a girl, I scared her. I didn’t hurt her, though. I don’t want to risk it.” She shrugs, helplessly. She’s not trying for pity, but if it gets her a room for the night, she’ll take it. Plus, it’s not like she knows what to do in this situation—she’s pretty sure he’s like her, that that’s what the smell means, but she still doesn’t _know_ him.

The man nods, understandingly. She still doesn’t really trust him, but she desperately wants to. She’s tired, and she’s confused, and really really hopes she’s not going to have to do this alone.

“You can stay,” he says. “I can teach you,” he offers, almost shy. “How to control it. If you want.”

Clarke eyes him for a long, tense moment. She really does want to trust him, but the last wolf she met tried to kill her and eat her best friend, so.

“I’m Clarke,” she says. She’ll stay the night, take a hot shower, and try to wash the smell of blood from her hair. She’ll figure the rest out in the morning.

“Lincoln,” the man says, grabbing an old-fashioned key from one of the wall hooks. “I’ll show you to your room.”

 

Raven finds her two days later. Clarke gets sloppy and lonely and turns her phone back on, on her second night at the lodge. Her muscles ache from that day’s training with Lincoln, and she’s sprawled out on the mattress, reading the dozens of anxious texts from her mother and Raven. There are a few voicemails too, but she doesn’t listen to those—she’s sure that if she hears Abby crying, she’ll go back.

Raven shows up at the lodge the day after. Clarke and Lincoln are in the lobby meditating, working on controlling her senses, when the banging starts. Raven’s practically throwing herself against the front door, shouting “Let me in, asshole,” followed by a string of curses. She gives the door one last solid kick, before Lincoln swings it open, looking thoroughly unamused.

Raven sizes him up, probably trying to determine how to go about killing him, until she sees Clarke hovering in the background.

“Hey, Rae,” she says lamely. Raven _glowers_.

“Fuck you,” she declares. “And fuck you too,” she says to Lincoln for good measure, and storms into the room.

“Do you know how fucking long it took to track you down?” she demands.

“Two days?” Clarke says, wryly. Raven looks ready to murder.

Lincoln has disappeared, probably in an attempt to give them privacy. Clarke has learned several things about the quiet innkeeper since her first night—she knows he bought and moved into the inn just three years ago, that he left his old pack because he was tired of fighting, that he has no biological family, and woke up one morning as a teen, with a crescent-shaped mark and sudden abilities. He’s the least talkative person she’s ever met, and doesn’t seem to get much business though he’s not wanting for money, and he has an extensive collection of herbal teas.

“One fucking text,” Raven scoffs. “We don’t know where you are, what might’ve happened, you don’t answer our calls—one fucking text is supposed to, what, _convince_ us to just let you do this on your own?”

“That was sort of the idea,” Clarke says, because clearly she isn’t good with apologizing.

“ _Fuck_ you,” Raven snaps. “Fuck you, and your misplaced martyr-complex, and your shitty goodbyes.” Her breathing is heavy, and her heart’s beating faster than Clarke has ever heard, and she can practically smell the rage and the anxiety and the exhaustion seeping from her friend—and she feels appropriately awful. Raven jabs at her with a sharp finger. “Werewolf or not,” she swears, “Pull that bullshit again, and I will _end_ you. I could—I’d find a silver bullet, or a stake or whatever. I’d hunt your furry ass down.”

That probably shouldn’t be what makes Clarke reach out and clutch her, but she does, and Raven sinks into the hug, anger forgotten.

“You’re an asshole,” Raven mutters into her shoulder.

“I know.”

“I missed you,” Raven whispers.

“I know,” Clarke holds on tighter. “Me too.” They break away. “How’d you find me, anyway?”

Raven smirks and holds up her phone. “Find My Friend, dumbass.” Clarke snorts—yeah, she probably deserves that.

Lincoln chooses that moment to walk back in, carrying a tray of steaming teacups, and what looks like Vienna Fingers. He’d probably been standing just outside the door, waiting for them to finish. Clarke is filled with a rush of fondness for the man.

He sets the tray down on the coffee table and clears his throat. Raven looks from him to Clarke with a raised brow.

“Lincoln, this is my friend Raven,” Clarke explains.

“ _Best_ friend,” Raven amends, still staring at the man skeptically. Lincoln remains unreadable.

“Raven, this is Lincoln. He owns the lodge,” Clarke pauses. “He’s also a werewolf. He’s teaching me.”

Raven picks up a cookie without a word, and bites into it thoughtfully. “So, what, he’s the Obi-Wan to your Skywalker?” Raven can only make sense of things after equating them to _Star Wars_.

“Who does that make you?” Clarke wonders, amused.

Raven smirks. “Han Solo, _obviously_.”

 

Wells calls that night. Raven and Clarke are in her hotel room, poured over the queen-sized bed while Raven tells her what she’s missed in school.

Lincoln has been up twice now to refill their white Jasmine tea, and they’ve pretty much gorged themselves on his pastries, so they’re feeling pretty warm and satisfied. Raven has her legs sprawled across Clarke’s back affectionately.

Clarke knows it’s Wells, his name in capital letters blinking on the screen, but it’s still a little surreal. She hasn’t spoken to her childhood friend, beyond a few hellos in the school hallway, since eighth grade. She answers on the third ring.

“Wells?” she asks, sharing a confused look with Raven. There’s a strange half-cough from the other end, and she realizes it’s a sob.

Wells is crying. He’s saying something, too, but it’s hard to make out the words between his shaky gasps. “ _I didn’t mean to,_ ” he’s whimpering. “ _I didn’t mean to!_ ”

Clarke sits up with a start, easily brushing off Raven’s legs. Raven glares for a second, before seeing the alarm in Clarke’s eyes.

“Wells, tell me where you are,” Clarke demands.

There’s a pause while he tries to catch his breath. “The cemetery,” he whispers. She’s hung up and running within the second.

They find him hunched over an overturned grave, the earth clawed open and tossed about. The casket is splintered, and the air is stale with the smell of rot. The corpse is mangled beyond recognition, chest torn apart and bones splintered. It’s hard to tell, but Clarke’s pretty sure its heart is missing, and maybe a lung.

Wells is kneeling in the dirt, face messy with tears and snot and blood. His teeth are stained with it, and his hands. His fingers look more like talons, but Clarke’s not sure it that’s just a trick of the light. His eyes, though—his eyes are definitely different. They’re wide, with pupils impossibly huge, and yellow. His face looks longer than it should, almost skeletal.

He smells like death, itself, and Clarke has to fight the urge to put as much distance between them as she can. Instead, she gently wipes his face with the sleeve of her jacket, and holds him as he cries.

She and Raven fill in the grave as best they can. They bring Wells back to the lodge with them. Lincoln clearly isn’t happy about it, but he doesn’t argue.

He pulls Clarke aside while Wells is in the shower. “He is dangerous,” he says, soft and urgent. “You should not be alone with him.”

“He’s my friend,” she shoots back. “And he needs our help.”

Lincoln sighs, but when she wakes up in the morning, she finds three fresh cups of tea instead of two.

 

So Wells is a wendigo, which is weird, but it’s not like she can talk. Lincoln knows a few things about it, but when Clarke and Raven try to research answers at the library, they just get nightmarish folktales, and everything leads to the same conclusion; wendigoes are evil, and need to be destroyed.

They’ve both decided that’s not an option, and tell Lincoln as much, so he sits the three of them down to set some ground rules.

Wells needs to eat human meat.

“It has to be dead,” Lincoln explains. “If you eat living flesh, the spirit will take over and you will be lost.”

Wells will sometimes hear the wendigo’s voice—he must always ignore it.

“It will try to convince you to let it out,” Lincoln warns. “It will pretend to be other things—your conscience, maybe, or a memory, or dream. You must always be wary, and never do what it says.”

Wells nods silently. He hasn’t spoken much since the cemetery. He still looks too thin, too pointy, but his eyes are back to normal, and his fingers are human again. “It keeps telling me to eat you,” he says wryly. “It’s kind of an ass.”

And, finally; Wells will always be a wendigo.

“There is no cure,” Lincoln says apologetically. “You will have to learn to live with this curse, and if you cannot…” he trails off, letting them fill in the blank.

If he can’t handle it, he’ll have to die.

“That won’t happen,” Clarke swears, clutching Wells’s hand in a death grip. She’s sure it hurts, but he doesn’t try to let go. “We won’t let it.” Raven nods, and Lincoln sighs. Wells says nothing.

Clarke calls her mom that night. Abby answers breathlessly, like she’d sprinted for her phone. “Hello? Clarke?”

“Hey mom,” Clarke says, and then bursts into tears. She says sorry ten times, and Abby’s crying too, saying _it’s alright, it’s alright_ , over and over.

“I’m coming home tomorrow,” she promises. “With Raven. And Wells.”

“Oh good,” Abby says. “Thelonious called me in a panic—I told him he was probably with you, but. A parent worries.”

“Yeah,” Clarke agrees. “I love you.”

“I love you too, sweetheart. I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Yeah,” Clarke says, and hangs up.

Wells sleeps sandwiched between Clarke and Raven. Raven falls asleep almost instantly—“I’m just a measly human,” she complains. “I don’t have your mythological stamina.”

“It never shuts up,” Wells whispers. Clarke curls closer to him instinctively, and clutches his hand. “It wants me to rip out your throat and eat your liver.” He shudders.

“Lincoln can teach you,” Clarke promises. “We’ll work on our control, together. It’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”

She can tell he doesn’t believe her.

 

Their return to school is a little underwhelming. Thanks to Lincoln, Clarke can keep her senses in check. She has a lot of homework to catch up on, and two tests to take, but otherwise the day is relatively normal. Her mother told the office Clarke had strep throat.

Her gym class is a little shocked when she manages to shoot a basketball through the net from the opposite end of the gym, but. She laughs it off as a fluke, and purposefully misses the free throw.

Now that she knows how to keep her abilities contained, Clarke can admit to herself that being a werewolf is pretty cool. She can feel her own strength bubbling just under the surface of her skin—she knows that if she wanted, she could tear the heavy storm door off its hinges and then throw it. She could outrun the track stars with almost no effort. She could ask someone a question and then listen to their pulse to determine if they’re lying.

She hasn’t done those things yet, but it’s enough to know that she could. It’s exciting, and one hell of a confidence boost.

“Don’t get cocky, kid,” Raven warns over dinner, poking her with a fork.

Clarke has learned she can only really stomach meat if it’s cooked rare. Or not at all, but it’s hard to sneak raw chicken past her mom. Raven’s having lasagna. Clarke’s having uncooked sausage that was meant for the lasagna. Wells is drinking water. They’re in a loose circle on Clarke’s living room floor, going over Biology notes.

Abby’s working late again, so the three end up falling asleep sprawled over the couch and recliner. Clarke wakes to her ringtone for Wells— _Zombies Ate Her Brain_ by The Creepshow. It’s still dark out, in the early hours of morning, and Clarke’s voice is hoarse from sleep.

“Wells?” She doesn’t hear any crying, which is a good sign.

“I’m at the golf course,” he says. “You’re gonna want to see this.” He pauses. “And bring Lincoln.”

She wakes up Raven and then calls the lodge. Lincoln agrees to meet them at the course—twelve miles of open field belonging to the country club some miles outside of town. Clarke used to go there with Wells when they were kids, and they’d feed the ducks at the pond while their parents socialized.

Lincoln’s already there by the time Clarke and Raven show up—they take Tangerine, since Raven can’t keep up with Clarke when she runs—and they find Wells out at the edge of the pasture, where the green meets the trees.

He’s standing over the bodies of Finn and Harper Collins, a Senior and Sophomore from Walden High.

Clarke didn’t know Harper very well—they’d had Earth Science together, and sometimes were paired up for projects. She was pretty, and shy, and nice, and now she’s nearly severed in half at the hips, staring up at the sky with flies in her mouth.

Clarke knew Finn a little; he’d asked Raven to prom his Junior year, and then went on a couple of dates before they decided they worked better as friends. He flirted with Clarke pretty heavily in Art History, but she’s pretty sure he wasn’t ever serious. He was good-looking, and charming, and a decent soccer player. Now he’s missing part of his left leg and his chest has been caved in with a rock.

“I didn’t do it,” Wells says, more exhausted than Clarke’s ever seen him. “I just woke up, and I was standing here.” He shivers, still wearing just sweats and a t-shirt. His feet are still bare. “I’m not eating them,” he swears. “I can’t, it’s—it’s different.”

Clarke puts a hand on his shoulder, a weak sort of comfort. “No one would blame you,” she promises. “But no one’s going to make you, either.”

Lincoln is poking around in the nearby underbrush, and Raven's standing far enough from the corpses that she can pretend not to see them. “So is this gonna be like, our new thing?” she demands. “Finding dead bodies in the middle of the night?”

“Technically it’s morning,” Clarke corrects wearily. She’s tired of it, too. If she never sees another corpse, it’ll be too soon.

“Clarke,” Lincoln calls. “Come here.” She heads over to where he’s crouched just inside the trees. He’s pointing out a fern covered in what looks like sap. He brushes his fingers against it, and they come back red. Ah. Blood. Wonderful.

“It’s not human,” he says darkly. Clarke breathes deeply, and realizes he’s right. It smells like copper, which isn’t unusual for blood, but there’s an underlying layer of musk that she recognizes instantly.

“Wolf,” she realizes.

Lincoln shakes his head. “Close,” he says. “Fox.”

Clarke looks back at the mangled siblings. “A fox did that?” she asks. She knew foxes were predators, related to wolves in some capacity, but. It’s hard to equate that with the horror show in front of her.

Lincoln sighs. “I don’t think so,” he hesitates. “Foxes aren’t typically fighters. They run, or hide. They certainly don’t go after humans.”

“So what are you thinking?”

Lincoln doesn’t answer, instead turning back to Wells. “You say you woke here,” he says. “What brought you?”

Wells shrugs hopelessly. “I just…I was dreaming about the golf course, and then I was here, and so were they,” he nods at the bodies.

Lincoln nods and stands. “We should burn them,” he decides. “If they are found like this, things could be bad for us.”

Raven is ready to argue—for all her sarcasm, she’s incredibly moralistic—but she helps them in the end. Bone doesn’t burn easily, so they haul the corpses into the bed of Clarke’s truck, and drive to the funeral home one county over. Lincoln picks the lock, because a broken window would be noticed, and Clarke helps him push her classmates into the incinerator.

Lincoln then breaks into the basement fridge, where they keep the corpses before burial, and delicately cuts into one’s side. He pulls out both kidneys and a decent amount of liver, placing them into a bag and handing them to Wells. Wells grimaces, but takes it. He can’t afford to be picky.

Clarke drops Lincoln off at the lodge, and then drives Wells to his house, before heading home. She and Raven curl up in her bed, and cry.

 

Clarke takes to wandering the woods in the daylight. Sometimes Raven or Wells comes along, but usually she’s alone. She circles the trees around her house, searching out unfamiliar smells and sounds.

Sometimes she visits the grave of the wolf that bit her. She never gets closer than a few yards. She stands and stares at the earth that she knows hides a monster. Sometimes she convinces herself she can still smell the blood.

It’s morbid, but. She can’t help herself.

She goes there early on a Sunday. It’s not like she has a set time when she likes to visit—usually she just shows up when she feels like it. She’s just left Raven sleeping off a hangover in her bed, Wells passed out on the couch downstairs. They’ve taken to spending most nights at her place, or at the lodge. She thinks they all like knowing where each other are, just in case.

She’s almost to the grave, when she sees it. A fox, the color of rust and small, nosing gently at the leaf litter, probably searching for grubs. Clarke pauses, waiting for it to notice her. She steadies her breathing to near-silence.

Eventually it freezes, probably smelling her, and looks up slowly. They lock eyes for a long moment before it turns and sprints off.

The smell of it lingers, though, and it throws Clarke off for a few moments. She’s almost home when she realizes why.

It was a fox, but.

It smelled like a human girl.

 

Lincoln calls her the day of the first full moon since she was bitten. “Come to the lodge at sundown,” he says. “You won’t want to be alone for this.”

That sounds ominous, but Clarke doesn’t question it. She figures if she’s going to turn into a monster, it’s probably best that she does it beside a seasoned one.

Raven demands to come along, and Wells just follows wordlessly. Lincoln raises a brow when he sees them. “They shouldn’t be here,” he says mildly. He’s learned not to really bother trying to turn them away.

“Too bad,” Raven says, predictably. She orders pizza while they wait for the sun to set—pepperoni for her; extra-rare, extra sausage for Clarke and Lincoln; and cheeseless for Wells (he covers it with his own toppings of human flesh).

“It is time,” Lincoln says when the last of the sunlight is leaking from the sky. He leads them down to the basement, outfitted with heavy metal chains and what looks like two human-sized muzzles made entirely of steel.

“Damn,” Raven breathes, voicing what the others are thinking. “Didn’t know you were into this kinda stuff, Linc.” She fingers one of the muzzles and quirks a brow at him. “Kinky.”

Lincoln offers a rare smile and nods to the smaller chain-and-muzzle set. “For you,” he tells Clarke, and starts locking himself into the other one.

Raven and Wells help tighten their locks. “Sorry,” Wells mutters as he fits the muzzle over her jaw. It’s a little loose, but she figures that’s to leave room for her snout. He gingerly pulls her hair out so it doesn’t get caught in the hinges.

“You should leave now,” Lincoln warns, voice sounding strained. Clarke peeks over to find his eyes gleaming yellow and bright in the dark. His fingers are growing darker and longer and decidedly claw-like. His normally shaved head is thickening with hair—or fur, maybe.

Raven shakes her head firmly. “We’re staying with you guys.” Wells nods by her side.

“Don’t be stupid,” Clarke snaps. Her entire body feels like it’s about to burst at the seams—like her skin can’t contain all her insides. Her joints feel sharp enough to slice with. She cuts her tongue on her teeth, and has to open her mouth to let them spill out. The room begins to lighten, and round at the edges. Her feet are pained and boiling; like she’s standing on pins and needles.

“Whoa,” Wells breathes, and even Raven looks somewhere between impressed and mortified.

 _She’s seen this before_ , Clarke remembers. _That first night_ …

It’s getting harder to form coherent thoughts—all she wants to do is run. She wants to run, and hunt, and kill.

She wants to rip out the heart of the human. She can smell her fear. She can smell the thing beside her—it smells of rot and death, so she won’t eat it. But the human…she can smell its warmth, and the blood under its skin, and she _wants it_.

She tests the strength of her leash all night, but the chains hold fast. She howls, she snarls, she cries. The wolf at her right stays quiet, but she knows he wants to run too. He wants to hunt, he wants to fight.

By the time the sun rises, Clarke is too exhausted to stay upright. She feels her skin grow over the fur—or maybe the fur sinks back into skin—and her brain kicks in, tiredly. She wants to sleep for ten years, and take a hot shower. She smells like wolf, and sweat, and there are cuts on her tongue and the roof of her mouth. Her palms are scabbing over, from where her claws dug in. Her eye sockets ache from being stretched—her jaw, too. Wells unbuckles her muzzle and chains with shaky fingers, and Raven releases Lincoln. They help the wolves upstairs, and into their beds.

Clarke can still remember the raw power that hummed in her bones, but it’s more of an after taste now.

Lincoln wakes her in the afternoon. “We should practice,” he says, nodding to himself as if it’d been some debate. Clarke stands up with a groan and shakes out her sore limbs.

He leads her out to the woods around the lodge. She can’t smell Raven or Wells, and Tangerine is gone from the parking lot, so she assumes they went home while she was sleeping.

“What are we practicing?” Clarke asks. They haven’t meditated in a while, but they always did that inside. She thinks maybe he’ll teach her how to track rabbits or something—that seems like something useful.

“Shifting,” he says, and then suddenly he’s a wolf. He sits down on his haunches and stares up at her, and it almost looks like a challenge, and. Well.

It’s not like she can’t _not_ take that on.

Her first try is terrible, her second only a little less so. Lincoln shifts back to himself, and he’s naked, which is a little distracting but not terribly so. Clarke’s begun to see him as a sort of older brother, or maybe uncle if he’s being especially grouchy. And anyway she’s too irritated with herself to be turned on.

“Focus,” he chides. “Feel the wolf inside your skin, and let it out. Feel your skin crawling, your mouth growing. Do not try to stop it, or tense up. You must relax. Let it happen. Become what you are.”

She doesn’t turn into a wolf that day, which is disappointing. Or the next day, or the one after. Lincoln doesn’t seem especially concerned, which only makes her feel a little better.

“It took me five months to master,” Lincoln says softly. “It will happen when it does.”

Clarke mopes around the lodge for a few days, stuffing herself with gingersnaps and fresh rabbit—Lincoln always seems to have endless amounts of both. She catches up on schoolwork, and sometimes sneaks into the hospital morgue when she visits her mom. She’ll take a few lobes of brain or a chunk of pancreas back for Wells. It’s disgusting, and she always feels guilty, but she’d rather corpse-rob, than lose her friend.

Lincoln still trains her in other ways—they meditate daily. He does teach her to track rabbits, and deer, and even wild pigs that she hadn’t even known about. They run a lot, and that’s definitely her favorite. She’s gone airborne a few times, going so fast. The first time she beats him in a race, she leaps up four feet. She feels like a badass.

Halloween falls on a Sunday, and Raven shows up dressed like Little Red Riding Hood.

“Cute,” Clarke deadpans.

“I thought so,” Raven smirks. She tosses a bundle of cloth at Clarke. “Get dressed—we’re going to a party. You know, like real teenagers.”

Clarke eyes the impromptu costume skeptically. “You’ve _got_ to be kidding me.”

Raven cackles as she goes downstairs to wait.

The party is at a ravine in the woods behind Walden. It’s well-known by the locals, but far enough away from everything that no one will phone in a noise complaint. By the time they get there, the party’s in full swing. There are water coolers full of beer sitting in the beds of trucks, and someone hooked up a few speakers to their i-pod’s Halloween playlist. Everyone’s in costume, most of which are just an excuse to wear themed lingerie, but. There’s a bonfire close enough to the water to not be a hazard, and the wide variety of smells makes it hard for Clarke to get a grip on her control at first. There’s weed and cigarettes and sweat and perfume and Axe body spray and sex and something around the edges that makes her hair stand on end, but she tries to ignore it.

A shoddily made Scarecrow leers over her and slurs, “Nice costume,” before giving a weak howl.

Clarke glares until he stumbles away.

She’s wearing a gray, furry hood with wolf ears, and a white long-sleeved nightgown that falls halfway down her thighs. Raven claimed it was so they’d match, but Clarke doesn’t buy it.

“Subtle,” Wells says, grinning at her costume. He’s dressed as a zombie. Clarke snorts.

“Hi, Pot. I’m Kettle.” Wells shrugs good naturedly, sipping from a solo cup. She knows it has to be water; his stomach can’t really handle anything else. Well, except human.

“I especially like the nose,” Wells teases, poking at the black face-paint.

“All the better to smell your shitty cologne with,” Clarke snaps. She sighs, closing her eyes. “Sorry, I just. There’s too many smells, and voices, and it’s fucking me up.”

Wells nods, understandingly. He always seems to understand. “I get it. Me too. It keeps telling me to eat the French maid,” he gestures to the girl in question. “I think it’s got a type, or something.”

Raven chooses that moment to drape herself over Clarke’s shoulder. “Grandma dear,” she slurs happily, “Don’t look now, but there’s a cute Disney princess who wants you to be her crown.”

Clarke glances around indiscreetly. “Which one? Is it Belle? You know she’s my favorite.”

Raven shakes her head sloppily, with a frown. “I _said don’t look_! And it’s Jasmine.”

Wells bumps her shoulder and nods towards a brunette across the fire. She’s dressed as Jasmine, alright, and she’s definitely cute, and definitely staring at them. Specifically Clarke. In the firelight, her eyes glow yellow.

“I may have a new favorite,” Clarke admits. Raven whoops loudly and shoves her.

“Go get ‘er, tiger!” As she speaks, the girl turns and fades back into the trees. Clarke watches her go, mildly disappointed. She’s still fairly irritated, and it’s not like dating is very high on her list of priorities, these days. She’s pretty sure Raven’s more disappointed than she is.

A warm hand lands on Clarke’s shoulder, but she knows who it is without looking. “What are you doing here?” she asks. Lincoln’s not exactly one for socializing, and he’s _definitely_ not one for underage drinking. She can smell the distaste leaking from his skin.

“We must leave,” he says, sounding more urgent than she’s ever heard him. “There are other wolves here.” He glances around distrustfully, and Clarke tenses beneath his palm.

“We didn’t drive,” she admits, feeling foolish. Walking back in these woods, even with what she has in her skin, is practically a death wish. She thinks back to the last time a wolf found her in these trees, and shivers.

“I will take him,” Lincoln nods to Wells. “On my back. You carry Raven. We will run, just like we’ve practiced.”

Clarke eyes Raven, unsteady and definitely drunk, and sighs. “Alright,” she agrees. “We’ll meet you there.” She may have beat him when it was one-on-one, but she’s not suffering any delusions about Raven slowing her down.

Wells awkwardly climbs onto Lincoln, gripping his shoulders, and then they’re gone. Raven is delighted by the free piggy back, and keeps digging her heels into Clarke’s ribs, slurring “Mush!”

“I _will_ eat you,” Clarke growls, but Raven just laughs.

They’re halfway to the lodge when he finds them. It’s a he, Clarke knows—she can smell him. The wolf steps out of the trees calmly, like he’s been waiting for them. With a sudden chill, she realizes he might have been.

He’s larger than the one that bit her, but just as dark, just as monstrous. Just as terrifying. His eyes, surprisingly, are blue—but she doesn’t have much time to think on that, because then he’s growling.

It’s a threat, she knows with some sort of vague instinctive understanding. She also knows she can’t back down, can’t bow her head, or she loses whatever sort of battle this is. So instead, she growls back.

She lets Raven slide down her back without a word. She can smell the fear on her friend, and she knows he does too, so she raises her shoulders and growls louder.

He holds her stare, teeth bared, for a long moment, before switching his attention to Raven, and Clarke snaps.

She doesn’t focus on her skin, or her anger. She doesn’t even think. One moment, she’s herself, growling at a wolf in her ridiculous costume, in the middle of the woods—and the next, she’s decidedly different. She can feel her muscle, the earth under her paws, and tension coiled in her limbs. She’s ready to jump any moment. The world is brighter and rounder and a little tinted, and she has a tail, which is new. She also has fangs, and she snarls, showing them off. She paws at the ground like a bull about to charge.

The wolf looks at her appraisingly. A howl cuts through the night, some miles off. The wolf takes off towards the sound, without another glance.

Clarke tips her head back towards Raven, who’s looking at her in awe—the fear has been replaced by something new. It smells different; admiration, maybe? Clarke lets her tongue loll out of her mouth to make her laugh. It works, and Clarke pads over. Raven hesitantly lays a hand on the back of her neck, and Clarke leans into the warmth. She’s eyelevel with Raven’s stomach, and head-butts her softly.

“Wow,” Raven breathes. “Cool. Not as cool as Lincoln, but—” Clarke head-butts her again, a little harder. “Okay, okay,” Raven laughs. “Color me impressed.”

Clarke dips down a little awkwardly, in invitation. Raven stares down at her skeptically. “Seriously?”

Clarke gives her a look she hopes translates into _just get on, asshole_. Raven huffs, so she thinks it worked.

She swings a leg over, trying not to rest her full weight on Clarke’s spine, which is sweet, but entirely unnecessary. Clarke could carry Raven, Wells, _and_ Lincoln on her back in this form, she’s pretty sure. She stands too quickly, and Raven clutches her with both thighs, fisting her hands in her fur.

“Careful,” Raven admonishes. “You’ve got precious cargo, here.” Clarke bucks a little to make her squeal. “Ass,” Raven mutters.

They make it to the lodge in record time, and Raven’s legs are shaking when she steps off. Wells and Lincoln are already inside, Clarke can smell them.

She also smells blood.

She shifts as she’s rushing through the door, which she’s sure looks ridiculous, but she’s too worried to care. The blood she smells is from a wolf.

Lincoln is sitting on the coffee table in the lobby, shirtless, as Wells ties a bandage around his left arm. Clarke runs over, prodding him for other, more fatal wounds, forgetting her nudity until Wells awkwardly clears his throat.

Lincoln is smiling at her softly, and grabs a quilt from the sofa, wrapping it around her shoulders. “I’m fine,” he promises.

“You should see the other wolf,” Wells quips, still flushed and staring at the ceiling. Clarke glares down at Lincoln.

“You should be more careful,” she orders. “You’re like a million years old in dog years.”

Lincoln huffs and cuffs her neck.

“We should all be more careful,” he says, soberly. “We’re not alone anymore. We mustn’t get careless.”

Clarke thinks back to the blue-eyed wolf, and fights a shiver. “I don’t know if we were ever alone.”

 

The next day, Clarke and Raven make it to class on time—a rare feat since she was bitten. They’re halfway through Algebra, when the door opens.

Principal Jaha strides in, and everyone tries to look like they’ve been paying attention. Just behind him trails a girl Clarke recognizes, but doesn’t place until they lock eyes.

Jasmine, from the ravine. Raven elbows her in the ribs.

“Class, this is Octavia Blake,” Jaha announces, waving one hand like a gameshow host. “She’s just transferred from Oregon. I expect you all to make her feel welcome here in the great state of Virginia.”

She hasn’t looked away from Clarke, and there’s something about her that seems altogether familiar. Her gaze is steady, and serious, her spine straight and shoulders back. She’s wearing sweats and sneakers, with a bag slung half-heartedly over one shoulder.

Jaha leaves, the teacher tells Octavia to sit wherever she’d like. She chooses the empty seat two desks behind Clarke, and she has to pass her along the way.

It’s not until the girl’s seated, that Clarke understands.

Octavia Blake smells like a wolf.


End file.
